Sony: PS3 Shipment Numbers Not Definite

Sony has for the first time admitted that it's not entirely sure it will achieve its planned shipment figures of two million by the end of 2006 and six million by the end of next March. SCEA executive vp Jack Tretton (right) has commented that the figures are just targets.


Following yesterday's big Sony media event, Sony Computer Entertainment America senior vice president of marketing Peter Dille told GameDaily BIZ, "We're on track; everything's gone smoothly from a manufacturing perspective... the numbers that were talked about for a while still stand; the two million units by the end of the calendar are still forecast and everything looks to be on track with that number."


However, according to a new report from Bloomberg, Sony isn't quite as confident in that two million figure, let alone the six million shipped by the end of the company's fiscal year next March. Dille's boss, executive vice president Jack Tretton admitted, "The honest answer is it's more of a target [for PS3 shipments]." He then added, "Clearly we've had production issues."


It would seem that the task of manufacturing a complex electronics device such as the PS3 has been a bit more challenging for Sony in the early going than perhaps they anticipated. "While they may have great engineering, producing it actually takes a lot of time and more money than was initially expected,'' commented Pascal Masse, a director at the Japanese unit of Aberdeen Management Asia Ltd.


While Sony is sticking to its 6 million target for next March, a number of analysts have predicted shipment numbers far less than that. Most recently, Enterbrain, publisher of Japanese gaming publication Famitsu, forecast sales of 4.13 units by March 2007. Over the long haul, however, Enterbrain still believes that Sony will control the market. By 2009, the publisher anticipates that Sony will have sold 34 million PS3s versus 28 million Xbox 360s and 25 millions Wiis.


And the long run is all that really matters, ultimately. As Tretton told us in a previous interview, "... we don't expect nor do we need everybody to embrace the [PS3] technology from day one. But I think what we're saying with PS3 is that this is the machine that is going to drive gaming for the next ten years."
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